ok, I'm going to be starting a blog, which (lets say) is planned to become big... This is a new idea in my head, so I can't tell you the niche or what is going on... but here is the thing... It's going to be a wordpress blog. I will be posting atleast 4 times a week. (most likely more) I will only be installing some small plugins. This I want to be VERY popular, but that's not the point... Would a high traffic blog work on a shared hosting plan and what good steps are there to do when building up... (i.e. starting with shared, then going VPS then dedicated) I've only used shared hosting... so please any and all advice would be helpful... Thank you.
You're a bit ahead of yourself here. Before worrying about a dedicated server you need to have the traffic & scripts to make it a worthwhile investment. And remember there are over 10,000,000 bloggers online blogging and only about 100 who can make the income needed to quit their jobs.
I wouldn't worry about VPS or a dedicated box for a very long time. You'll need to have at least 10,000 daily uniques to worry about that kind of power. Hell my blog hits 100ish uniques daily and only uses about 40mb in bandwidth each day - and I've got 20GB/month in bandwidth on that hosting account lol. If you do the math I only use about 10% of what I could on my account. Focus more on getting your blog going, don't worry about the bigger technical servers until way down the road.
I know it's going to take some time to get very popular (I know it's not easy) it's just I don't want to be get in trouble with a shared hosting plan if the site is getting alot of traffic... is wordpress, server heavy when your have alot of traffic??? this is really because I don't want to get bitten in the behind ^_^
Your shared host will send you an email usually when you need to move to a larger plan or dedicated server. You won't get in trouble being popular....
Don't worry,for now just use the shared hosting. Coz now i received average 200+ concurrent user on my blog without any problem. I'm hosted at shared hosting.
I agree with all the above. Don't run before you can walk. Get content and traffic first. Your web host won't be slow to let you know when the time has come to move on up.
Listen to what they're saying.. they all make very good points.. and I DID buy a VPS for my first thing.. and didn't even use a gig of it for the first 6-8 months.. Just stop buy hostgator.com and buy a small plan. You wont need anything more than that.
I agree. No sense in shelling out the cash for a VPS when you don't need it. Shared will suit you well for a long time.